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Significant Other and I both deal with people who live in California for our jobs, and both of us are getting pretty fucking fed up with constantly getting things late (I don’t mean as in “late in the evening”, I mean as in “missing deadlines”). Clearly if I live on the East coast, and I decide to start work at 8 a.m. my time, I don’t expect my co-workers on the West coast to be available at that time.

HOWEVER.

If we’ve been working on the same publication, with the same schedule, for 4 years, I do expect them to know what our deadlines are (both in their time zone and in mine) and that I need things WEDNESDAY MORNING EASTERN TIME. I mean, this shouldn’t be a fucking surprise by now. It’s been the same since we started publishing. If I don’t get things in the morning IN MY TIME ZONE, they don’t get laid out on time, and then our publication doesn’t go out on time. It’s not fucking rocket science.

So someone please explain to me how, if we’ve had the same deadlines in place for 4 years and the same people on both the East and West coasts working on said publication, I’m sitting here right now WITH NOTHING TO DO ON A WEDNESDAY MORNING. Which means I’m going to have to try and somehow create extra time later in the day to compensate. Breaking news: I can’t manipulate time. I can’t create extra hours from the wasted ones that occur when things don’t get to me on time. SO NOW EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE LATE.

But why did this happen? I sign off between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern time each night. That’s only 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. on the West coast. WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH THAT TIME? Answer: not what they’re supposed to be doing.

The reason this is problematic is because it’s not like, if I sign into my e-mail Wednesday morning at 8 and don’t have the things I need yet from the West coast, I’m going to get them at 9 or 10 my time. If they’re not there when I sign in, I’m probably not getting them until at LEAST noon EAST COAST TIME, if not closer to 1 p.m. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. I’m sorry, but it is. That’s 4 HOURS I have to sit around waiting, and waiting, and waiting, because the assholes on the West coast, WHO SHOULD KNOW OUR DEADLINES BY NOW, didn’t want to bother doing what they had to do yesterday in their time zone. So they might come in at 9 a.m. THEIR TIME and think “Oh, there’s still plenty of time to get this stuff sent to The Anger Ball.” BUT THERE ISN’T, BECAUSE IN MY TIME ZONE IT’S ALREADY THE AFTERNOON.

Are time zones really that hard to comprehend? I’ve never found them that challenging. Breaking news: When it’s 2 p.m. where you live, it’s not 2 p.m. EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. You especially need to be aware of this if you’re working with people in OTHER TIME ZONES, so your co-workers do not track you down and cause you bodily harm.

This rant has been brought to you by the Earth rotating both on its axis and around the sun, the letter “T”, and FUCKING COMMON SENSE.